30 FPS Versus 60 FPS For PS4 And Xbox One: Does It Really Matter?

With the advent of next generation consoles does 30FPS vs 60FPS really matter?

As a gamer, have you ever heard about frame rate drop? Of course you have, we’ve all experienced it from time to time. Most gamers have experienced some brutal frame rate drops that cause their screen to look like a sequence of snapshots. This distracting experience is absolutely annoying at best, and can end your game at its worst. It makes it impossible to react or play accurately and can cause some real problems.

With the advent of next generation consoles i.e. the PS4 and Xbox One, almost every hardcore gamer is expecting that the next wave of games will run at a golden standard of 1080P/60 fps. However, it takes a lot for a piece of software to be able to run at 30 or 60 frames a second consistently, and with so much stress being put on the console or PC’s hardware, is it really worth it to push past the 30 fps barrier? The human eye doesn’t recognize a frame rate increase once it goes above a preset value, so why do developers bother with it?

Most games for the soon-to-be last generation of consoles run games at both 30 and 60fps as it is and these games are pretty much at height of the hardware’s life cycle. Games like The Last of Us are all locked at 30 frames per second and it looks gorgeous. Not only do plenty of games get locked at this frame rate, they look good at it. This is great option for the PS3 and Xbox 360. Other, more fast-paced games like Call of Duty however are locked in at around 60 frames a second. Games that have a faster pace and depend more heavily on quick reactions and split section decisions seem to have a higher frame rate, which is understandable. This isn’t a new feature in gaming by any means either, developers and consoles have been able to pull 60 frames a second for quite a few years, although with a few compromises.

As far back as the Nintendo 64 developers were running games at 60 fps. One such popular racing game for example, F-Zero X could run at 60 frames a second with about 30 vehicles on the screen at any given time. The problem that the developers ran into was that sacrifices had to be made to keep the game running at a steady 60 frames. Things like polygon count and textures had to be greatly reduced to get everything on the screen at once without any performance drops and that means thinning the game down a bit. F-Zero X most likely could have been playable at 30 frames a second, but it wouldn’t have looked as good. This fast-paced racer would have been choppy and somewhat “jerky” looking at 30.

Pacing of a game has a lot to do with what the frame rates are set at. On the flip side of this though, PC gamers don’t really have to worry about locking their frame rates into anything lower than 60 with the current hardware and game engines available today. Most games, even cross-platform titles give them the ability to easily tweak graphical settings, frames per second and a variety of other options that either directly or indirectly affect the games’ performance.

Let’s take a look at Borderlands 2, the default for this game is 60FPS for PCs. It’s a fast-paced, brightly lit game that has a whole lot of background processing, especially if you decide to leverage Nvidia’s PhysX engine. While it looks great, it puts a massive load on the system and can really bog things down. The PhysX feature wasn’t available for consoles, and it’s not like this feature really added anything to the game that console players were missing out on, a bit of eye candy and some extra effects from specialized weapons, but that’s about it. With that said, it’s obviously awesome to have, but it comes at a price.

When you’re running a game at 60 frames a second with all the graphical goodies turned all the way up it’s fairly likely that you’re going to see a hiccup every now and again. Even going from 30 to 60 frames you’re still going to notice if the system is running smoothly, then suddenly drops down to say, 45 or 35 frames only to spike back up, specially in PC games. In this sense, console gamers don’t have to worry about it as much. While you may see a drop every once in awhile, the software has been optimized to run as efficiently as possible. While this has also been done with the PC versions of the games, the wide array of hardware and software configurations certainly makes it a more challenging task.

Games that are locked in at 30 frames a second certainly leave more room for visual styles, and background processes, but doing this can also make the game look choppy, and unpolished. A good example of this is Sleeping Dogs. Playing this game at 60 frames a second vs. 30 frames has a relatively noticeable impact on the game. In side-by-side comparisons you can see fairly easily that the video running at 30 fps is choppy, almost like there is missing data in between frames. While the player may not necessarily directly notice the lower frame rate, they will most likely notice the game appearing to almost skip to the next frame, almost like it could be struggling to render the images, even though the hardware is running at optimal performance levels.

Can people play games at 30FPS with little to no problem? Absolutely, but with the leap in display technology, PC hardware and soon-to-be available PS4 and Xbox One that are incredibly powerful, there is very little reason to lock a game’s frames at 30FPS, even the current generation hardware that is soon to be outdated doesn’t seem to have a problem with most games running at over 30 frames a second. While you can still game at lower frames there really is no doubt that 60FPS is better than 30.

So yes, 60 fps in video games matter but are we going to see it become the standard anytime soon? Nope. Just like with any console cycle, developers will need more time to get themselves acquainted with the new hardware. However certain games like Titanfall [I can’t imagine this game being played at 30fps], the next Halo and even launch games like DriveClub are targeting 60 FPS. It is only a matter of time before we see games pushing the barrier, game developers finding intelligent ways to write optimized code to attain the much wanted golden standard in video games.

“So yes, 60 fps in video games matter but are we going to see it become the standard anytime soon? Nope.”

Uhhhh. Silly console peasants. 60fps has been the standard for PC Master Race for many years. 120fps for some. In a couple years 4k 60fps will be our new standard. Meanwhile “next-gen” consoles will still be choosing between sub-1080p at 60fps or 1080p at 30fps trying to come up with excuses for why resolution and fps don’t matter.

let me put it to you out side of pc.does having a ferrari over a honda really matter they both drive.does having a house over a condo really matter they are places to live.see where im going.

george

Well you’re right, sticking with the latter would please you. If you want more pleasure and usefulness then you’d get a PC. However, you obviously are already satisfied with your deal; so I guess you’re lucky. Ignorance is bliss. Sadly though, most of the people the PCMR deals with are those who actually want more, sorry if I singled you out.

totallymichael

“So yes, 60 fps in video games matter but are we going to see it become the standard anytime soon? Nope.”

Uhhhh. Silly console peasants. 60fps has been the standard for PC
Master Race for many years. 120fps for some. In a couple years 4k 60fps
will be our new standard. Meanwhile “next-gen” consoles will still be
choosing between sub-1080p at 60fps or 1080p at 30fps trying to come up
with excuses for why resolution and fps don’t matter.

All Platform God Gamer

Haha, you know the “pc master race” is just a way for nerds to try and have power over the internet because they have no power in real life, aka: its a self esteem booster for people like you. All Platform God Gamer, single platforms peasants should shut their mouths in the presence of our God Emperor.

Clandestine Fox

The book was better.

kavi chauhan

PCMASTERRACE! YES MY MAN!I love you michael.

Luau

Youtube only runs 60 fps.

Ville

You are a retard. Youtube runs at 30fps!

me

yeah youtube only runs at 30fps…and you say youtube like everyone who plays video games watches or posts them on youtube when its only like 3% maybe even less…

30fps is fine as long as its locked and never goes below. You can’t even tell the difference in that video. Seeing higher definition is games (nintendo 720 crap to ps3/xb3 1080) will make a far greater impact.

you sir, are misinformed.http://amo.net/NT/02-21-01FPS.html
as we dont see in frames, the measure at which the human eye can see frames is actually really high.
TV and movies use frame by frame blurring to make movement seem fluid, but games use static sharp images per frame, therefore the higher the fps the smoother your game gets, and you will notice a massive difference between 30 to 60fps, and even with 60 to 120, provided your monitor can refresh fast enough.
i would normally finish these comments (as they happen alot) with an insult to your intelligence, but i think that’s not fair, as i believe you just have no gone out of your way to actually read up on the subject, and have been told by some one else that your original statement is in fact true…just so everyone else knows, we can see10x 30 fps (300fps), and in some cases beyond (by that i mean notice a difference).

apLundell

This is a common myth/misunderstanding.

If you ran a old fashioned film movie projector at 15fps you would be able to tell that it was flickering a light on and off. But if you run that same projector at 30fps it will look like the light is constantly on.

That’s what they mean when they say that 30fps is high enough that people “can’t see it”.

But, because our eyes are analog, the framerate where we stop perceiving the flicker is different than the framerate where motion looks completely smooth to us.

idiotwhoeverwrotethisarticle

“Just like with any console cycle, developers will need more time to get themselves acquainted with the new hardware.”

I keep seeing this a lot and it really is idiotic. This console cycle is unlike any other, The machines are using PC architecture, X86.

X86 was introduced in 1978. Yes 1978, It is not some foreign alien architecture that has a steep learning curve or that needs optimization over time, It has been mastered, Optimized, learned and practiced to the fullest degree for nearly 30 years. If the developers don’t know how to use it or the tools by now they never will. You will not see as big a jump in quality from launch titles to the end of this next generation (LOL) as with say Uncharted 1 to The Last Of us (Which was a choppy, jagged, blurry mess of a game), Mark these words.

hvd hvd

if you have always played on just a console NO it doesnt matter because you never had 60fps to begin with.ps,xbox,ps2,ps3,xbox 360, did not care about fps.just wanted to play games.

there are only 2 types of gamers that care about fps.pc gamers and pc gamers with consoles for exclusives.true console gamers dont care we cant a console and the games.

if you say it does matter then you are a pc gamer with a console or a pc gamer.if the consoles did 1080p/60fps there would be no need to have a pc.